Course details

Name: ENGL - 540

Title: THE MODERN BRITISH NOVEL

Section: 21

Semester: Summer - 2022

Credits: 3

Description:
The aim of this course is to introduce some of the major novels of British modernism—the dynamic, revolutionary period of change within the arts that began in the first decades of the 20th century. We will seek to become better readers, writers, and thinkers, and to cultivate a classroom atmosphere of intellectual curiosity and excitement.

The modernist period is generally thought of as the first part of the 20th century, with some critics focusing narrowly on the decades between the world wars, and others extending the period from the 1890s through the 1950s. During these years, huge changes took place in the way that writers and readers conceived of literature. While the changes are hard to summarize, we can say that free verse took on an increasingly important role in poetry, and interior monologue became a dominant form in fiction. At the same time, large political and cultural changes were taking place. These years saw: two world wars and the Russian Revolution; the threats to liberal democracy posed by communism and fascism; the rise of labor unions and mass politics; new egalitarian ideas of women’s roles in society, including the women’s suffrage movement; Freud’s psychoanalytic revolution and a new openness about sexuality; radical breakthroughs in science; and the explosion of new mass media such as radio, film, and recorded music as well as new technologies of transportation and communication. All of these transformations constitute a broad historical context to our understanding of the literature of the era.

Authors we will read may include Joseph Conrad, EM Forster, Ford Madox Ford, Virginia Woolf, Stella Gibbons, Evelyn Waugh, Elizabeth Bowen, Ivy Compton-Burnett, George Lamming, V.S. Naipaul, and Muriel Spark.

Last updated on 2022-01-21 By Harrison Kim (harrisonk)

Schedule: Wednesday From 6:30 pm To 9:00 pm

Graduation requirements:

  • ()
  • Any Literature (1e)
  • Genre Study (Fiction)
  • Post-1900 (1d)
  • Graduate (BA/MA)

Teaching Faculty: Greenberg Jonathan (greenbergj)

Is course canceled: No